Hunting Day
by WhitOro
Summary: Weeks before the journey to Arendelle, Prince Hans and his brothers share some family time: some hunting in the woods, a nice dinner, a whole lot of hate. One-shot.


**Hunting Day**

A clear sky, a blinding sun. A typical warm day of summer. A perfect afternoon for some hunting.

Prince Hans raised one of his gloved fingers, freeing himself from an irritating drop of sweat that was running down his chin. He put back both of his hands on his riffle, waiting on top of Sitron, his horse. In the distance, he could hear the barking of the family dogs, running through the woods, searching and catching the fallen preys.

A cool breeze graced him and his other brothers. The thirteen princes of the Southern Isles decided to split up in small groups, to hunt more freely, and Hans had ended up with prince number one, now King Albert, prince number two, Hermann, and prince number six, Manfred, just recently came back from one of his travels. That whole family hunt was apparently a celebration his return. An hollow lie, Hans knew it all too well, Manfred wasn't really the hunter-time. It was just an excuse for the others to tantalize their own ego by catching some game.

The youngest didn't mind, actually, he enjoyed hunting well enough. But his small quartet wasn't having the luck of all the others. All that they were able to catch was the endless, gross chattering of Hermann. The man, so large and corpulent that his horse seemed ready to break in two, was talking about his latest adventures in the lowest brothels of the kingdom.

"…So this little minx just smiles" he was saying. "And I couldn't contain myself, so I just jumped on top of her…"

"Let me guess," Hans interrupted him. "You killed her with your own weight."

Manfred laughed and Albert rubbed his nose, desperate, as the second prince started growling in anger. "Little Hans, hold your tongue" he shoot.

The youngest raised his chin, looking at the others without smiling: "I'm just tired of hearing the little tales of how you got all the plagues and crusts in your trousers, that's all."

"You're the one to talk" Hermann sneered. "You too spend your nights among the commoners getting drunk and bending wenches. Who knows what kind of plagues and crusts hides inside _your_ trousers."

"Unlike you, brother, I keep my stories for myself and my body well scrubbed and healthy" Hans finally smiled. "I'm not the one who keeps scratching his groin at the dinner table, am I?"

Hermann grunted and Manfred laughed once more, overjoyed. He was a rather attractive man with a sharp face and fiery reddish hair, kept long and closed in a ponytail. "I'm happy to see that our lovely family hasn't changed much in the last year," he noticed.

"Maybe," king Albert twirled his moustache. "You should tell us more about your last voyage dear Manfred. I'm sure that it would lighten up the mood."

The other nodded. "Ooh, the British Isles are a rather amusing set of countries I'd say. I travelled through all of them. In London, I had the chance of meeting Lord Byron himself…"

Hermann watched him, a bored look on his face: "Who is this Byron fellow?"

"He's a poet and a writer" informed Hans with weary voice.

"Well then, I don't want to hear anymore about him. When people talk about books my hands reach the riffle by themselves."

"You would actually like him dear brother," informed Manfred. "You two have lots in common."

"Oh really?"

"Lots of superfluous meat on your belly for sure." Manfred and Hans shared an amused smile as Hermann pursed his lips in anger, practically growling like a dog.

Albert just shook his head, sighing heavily. "Now, now" he chimed in. "Is there anybody here capable of starting a conversation without insulting his other brothers?"

"Why doesn't the king try?" gently asked Hans, looking in the distance, attempting to find a target. "I'll be happy to hear some of his wise words."

"You will. Now that I think about it, we need to discuss something rather important," Albert looked around, checking if he had the attention of the others. "The Kingdom of Arendelle will soon have a new queen. Princess Elsa has come of age. The coronation is in about two weeks and one of you princes needs to go there…"

Hermann scratched one of his reddish cheeks, "And why?"

"We have been invited," Albert frowned at his brother. "Why else?"

"So what? Send a letter saying we don't want to go."

"And why we don't want to?"

Hermann gave him an annoyed look "Arendelle brother? Are you kidding me?"

"We must go. The former king was a good friend of our father."

"Yes" Hermann smiled once more. "The _dead_ king of Arendelle was a good friend of our _dead_ father. I don't see why any of us needs to go to the coronation of his shut-in daughter… I say, who locks up his own castle for thirteen years? Somebody who has something to hide… and god knows what they have to hide… maybe she's some crazy virgins-eater like that Hungarian… what's-her-name?

"Lady Bathory?" yawned Manfred.

"That one" Hermann snorted. "I get chills only imagining it. Who knows what happens behind those doors? Satanic orgies, witchcraft, sickening blood rituals, incestuous fornication?"

"Sounds like my kind of party" Hans crude joke came out dry and cold, but it still managed to give Manfred a smile.

"Arendelle is a small but important country in the international chessboard," blurted with frustration Albert, tightening his grip on his horse's bridles. "We need to maintain a high-quality relationship with them. One of us needs to go."

Hermann looked away "Well I'm not going."

"Thank god" Hans narrowed his eyes, staring at the treetops. "They would have had to clean your guts off the walls once you exploded at the buffet."

"Oh, little Hans, you're really pushing is today" barked the second prince. "You better stay quiet or else…"

"Enough" shouted Albert, once more. "I'm tired of this bickering… I decided! We will send Otto…"

Manfred pouted. "Yes… so he can get drunk and puke all over the queen like when he was sent by father in Moscow."

Albert sighed "Oh god you're right. I'll send Wilhelm then!"

"Wilhelm?" Hans smiled. "Didn't he start a war the last time he went out of the castle?"

"No, no, no" Hermann was laughing. "The Prussian only _threatened_ to invade us after his visit."

The king moved a hand across his face. "The… twins?"

At those words, the other three princes started laughing at unison, Hermann practically melting, his bulging reddish face covered in tears.

"Alright" Albert was getting impatient. "Manfred, why don't you go? You love to travel!"

"To tell you the truth, I would love to visit Arendelle" the sixth prince shrugged. "But I have no interest for a coronation and a party in honor of a hermit-princess."

"Send Hans!" Herman pointed his arm. "He can go! What else does he have to do here aside from stealing my women?"

"I tend to avoid _your_ women Hermann… and nothing would make me happier than leave this place for a few weeks" Hans only said that half-heartedly with a polite smile. He knew from the start that they would have sent him, that was his only role in the family: representative at the parties nobody wanted to attend to.

But then, in a second, he raised an eyebrow, without saying anything. He quickly reflected on the opportunity. A new Queen in Arendelle… a rather young one too.

"You said the queen has come of age?" he asked.

"Indeed she has" said Albert. "And she also has a younger sister. Anything that might interests you, dear brother?"

"You see, you see?" Hermann chuckled. "He's already eager to go there. He said it himself, those are his kind of parties."

"Your minds are filthy brothers" Hans shrugged. He raised his riffle and pointed it at the treetops, shooting without a hint of warning, taking the others by surprise. In the distance, a quite large object fell down the sky.

"Finally" Manfred applauded. "Nice shot Hans."

"Thanks" he spurred Sitron. "I'll go catch it."

"We have the dogs for that" said Albert.

"I know, but I want to move a bit… how about you Manfred?"

"Of course. I was tired of standing still too."

They moved gently down the grass hill, followed by a couple of retrievers dogs and the voice of Hermann: "Don't have too much fun without us!"

The two brothers trotted through the plain, moving closer and closer to the pine woods. Hans pensively glanced his brother, asking: "So, seriously, how was Britain?"

Manfred smiled. "Bad food, cold people, dreary weather, funny accents. Not that I'm upset, really, others were the things that interested me."

"Sounds tedious."

"It was for the most part, but…"

"But you got the chance to leave this place…"

"You said it, I didn't."

Hans sighed. "When will you bring me with you in one of these travels? You know that I'd be happy to be at your side."

"I travel to stay away from my brothers, my dear Hans."

"We can stay away from our brothers together."

Manfred snickered, and Hans smiled at the same time. It was odd how the sixth prince was the brother he felt closer, exactly because he had seen so little of him. While Hans was growing up, Manfred was always travelling far away, exploring the world, looking for the weird and the unconventional, and because of that, he never really had any chance to mock or prank the youngest like all the others did.

They reached the margins of the forest, the constant barking and shooting ruining the otherwise lovely atmosphere. Hans dismounted Sitron, sending one of the dogs in the woods, to retrieve his prize. He stood silently, travelling with his eyes through the vegetation, lost in thought. Finally, the retriever came back, a rather fat and tempting duck inside of his jaws. Hans kneeled and petted the dog, taking in his hands the dead animal.

He just stared at it for a while and this caught Manfred's attention. "Why are you so quiet now, Hans?"

"I was reflecting."

"As you often do" the long haired prince got off his burly black stallion. "If I may know, about what?"

"About hunting… think about it," Hans raised the duck in the air. "Men don't _need_ to hunt anymore. At least not men of our status. We're not animals that can't find food in any other way… so why do we do it?"

His brother shrugged, "Why of course? Boredom. Pleasure. Both?"

"Indeed. But that's only the surface of it…" he got up. "There's a deeper reason than that."

"Oh really?" Manfred raised an eyebrow, looking intrigued. "So why do we do it?"

"Power" Hans smiled. "All hunting is really about power. The demonstration of the superiority of a predator over a prey. While in nature it's still clothed with the needs of nutrition, we men perfected it, and brought it to its purest form. The showing of supremacy of a being over another…" he raised his head, looking at the sky. "That is what makes us different. Men and animals. The way we use the power."

"Lord Byron would wet himself if he had the chance of meeting you" Manfred smirked. "For a man that holds so little of it, you sure understand what power is, dear brother."

_So little of it_. Hans chewed the inside of his own cheek. Yes. Too little. A little prince of a little country still treated like a little boy by too many of his brothers. "I'm tired" he declared.

Manfred tilted his head. "Of what?"

"Of having so little of it. None of it really."

"You're a prince. You're filled with power."

"_Aah_" Hans gave out a bitter laugh. "What power? I'm the last in a family of way too many people. I'm never called in to make decisions and I'll never have my own throne, despite knowing I would do great things… this is not power."

"If it's a throne you want, then you're not searching for power, brother," Manfred placed a hand on his shoulder, still smirking. "You're searching for recognition. Which is kind of a sign of weakness if you ask me…"

"Of course I want recognition!" Hans cheerfully stared back at the other. "Power by itself is worthless if others don't know that you're holding it. Symbols are needed. Crowns, and sceptres and thrones! It's not weakness, it's common sense."

"Let's be frank now," Manfred folded his arms. "You want this _recognition_ because our brothers ignored you your entire life. You want to prove them wrong. Again, if you ask me, this is the symptom of a rather weak willed spirit, dear brother."

"Tsk" Hans moved back towards Sitron. "I don't care what you think."

"Then why are you talking to me?"

"I like to waste my time."

Manfred left out a roaring laughter, as he jumped on his own horse. Hans was smiling too. While they were moving back to their companions, the sixth prince talked once more: "You should be grateful with the others."

Sceptical, Hans looked at him with raised eyebrows: "Why? They made my life a tedious torture."

"And because of that, you grew apart from the family stupidity and became smarter than each and everyone of them" he chuckled. "Me excluded of course."

Hans sighed, and Manfred kept staring at him. "So," the long haired prince narrowed his eyes. "Are you going to Arendelle?"

"I'm thinking about it…" He simply answered, as they finally reached their brothers once more.

* * *

Otto, the fifth Prince, dull eyes and prematurely white hair, opened up his plump lips and blew out a cloud of smoke. "I remember the former Queen of Arendelle…" he said, before biting once more his cigar. "She visited with her husband a few times. She was quite attractive for a woman of the north…"

The massive dinner table of the Southern Isles' princes was filled with foods of every kind. A lot of them were the animals shoot out of the sky that same day, but the main course was a gigantic roasted pig in the middle in the middle of it all. The eldest Albert held the head of the table, and his brothers filled the sides. Hans had found himself on the right, between Hermann and Manfred, and in front of Otto, that he was carefully listening.

"Her daughters sure must be just as good looking…" concluded the fifth prince, liberating another cloud of his asphyxiating smoke, that could have easily ruined the aroma of the other plates had I been only slightly stronger.

Hans took up his glass of wine. "When it comes to queens and princesses, beauty is secondary. Others are the things that makes them appealing."

"Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, anyway" said Manfred, tasting a piece of pork.

Hermann chuckled, stuffing his face with an entire duck. "You know what came up with that? Women that are ugly and fat…"

Hans glanced his brother. "In other words, those that took your virginity?"

At the table they all laughed, and Hermann shook his head. "Little Hans is being testy these days. Somebody knows why?"

Prince number four, Markolf, gave a smirk that looked like it belonged on a rat's face. "All women get a little testy once or twice a month my friend, is biology."

Another general laugh. Hans rolled his eyes, sipping again his wine. He always hated Markolf more than the others. He was the one that many years before decided, _wouldn't it be fun to pretend out little brother didn't exist for a while?_ A while that lasted two years. He was the head of the army, and dressed in high uniform at all times, a string of self-attributed medals filling his chest.

He threw his black mane of hair behind his shoulder, cutting another piece of pork. "Why are we talking about the crazy caged broad of Arendelle again?" he asked.

"The coronation?" King Albert grunted. "I already told you, we've been invited."

"Nobody was listening," chuckled Hermann, drowning his duck in wine.

"So little Hans wants to go?" Markolf laughed.

Hans narrowed his eyes. "I probably will…"

"Why?"

"Somebody has to, no?"

"Why do you ask about the princess?"

Hans tilted his head, smiling. "I didn't. We were talking about Arendelle and she came up in the discussion."

"Ooh, dear god," Markolf kept laughing in his face, practically growling. "I get it now…"

"Only now?" Hermann chuckled with him. "I got it from before we even started talking about it…"

Ludwing, seventh prince, was smirking. "Dear little Hans wants his own little kingdom and his own little princess. Isn't that just cute?"

"Cute? That's a thought worthy of a future nightmare," Markolf poured another glass of wine for himself. "Our little Hans impregnating queens and spawning his own line of little whiny ginger royals? A sign of an incoming apocalypse…"

Little, little, _little_. They kept saying that word. Hans slipped another piece of duck in his teeth and chewed angrily at it, forcing himself to stay calm.

"She would probably freeze your gonads off," laughed Otto. "Among the courts of Europe, they call her the invisible princess. Nobody has ever seen her for almost two decades. Thirteen years in a castle, she must be more dry and repressed than Tsarist Russia…"

"Alright, this is enough," King Albert's voice came strong among his brothers. "Hans is doing a big favour to all of us. We should be grateful of his availability."

"Thank you brother," Hans interrupted him. "But I don't need defences… I…"

"If you want your own land and your own throne so badly," once more Markolf's voice came in strong. "We have that little island with its broken down castle just an hour of boat from the coast… you can imagine it's a country, and have your fun playing king there… bring a couple of dolls with you, it'll be easier to play pretend…"

Hans starred at him right in the eyes. "Just like you're having your fun, pretending you're a great military leader, despite the fact our army wouldn't repeal the invasion of herd of cows!"

At those words, through Markolfs' eyes passed a flash of hate.

"Hans…" Manfred was whispering. "Maybe you should calm dow…"

"I know what I have to do…" Hans jumped on his feet. "Each and every one of you… you like to mock me, call me _little Hans_… you like to say that I'm a dreamer… you think I don't know what's happening here?" he moved, walking around the table, staring as the faces of his brothers. Some were amused by that outburst, some kept eating quietly, practically ignoring him.

"I won't say I'm _the_ victim here… it's clear that we all hate each other deeply in this nice family of ours. Mocking and insulting one another is our favourite pastime… but with me it's always the same. _Little_ Hans, with his _little_ dreams. What's so _little_ about them? And why am I the only one who has these kind of dreams? I know…" He looked at each and every one of them in anger, meeting only disinterest and entertained grins.

"You all lack imagination. We're laughing and deriding a princess locked up in a castle, but the truth is, you're all locked up in a castle, one in your own damn mind! You all lack the force of will to open up, see that the world is a much bigger place than the Southern Isles! Our father left us a country as big as a piece of bread in a puddle of spit! And all of you accepted it! All of you, are too weak to think bigger for yourself… I'm the only one who wants to do that, therefore, I must be mocked… well I don't accept it anymore!"

His voice cold, his eyes on fire, he announced: "Yes, I want a kingdom! Yes, I want a throne, and a crown, and even a Queen, why not?! I want people cheering me and I want power! More power than I have now! More power than the one that comes from simply being one of the many princes of this puddle! And I want it because I understand it! I want it because I know how people think! I want it because I would be a better king than any of you, if only I had the chance to prove it!"

For a second, nobody said anything else. Then, Otto blew more smoke in the air. "_Cute_. Isn't he just _adorable_ when he gets angry like this?"

"Personally, I think we should pretend he isn't there for a little more," Markolf laughed. "Come on, the pork is getting cold…"

Hans shook his head and moved out of the room. Behind, he still head their voices.

"Awww, look, he's running away!"

"He's probably going to close himself in his room and cry in a pillow…"

"_Dear diary, my brothers can be so mean_…"

Laughs. A mountain of laughs. Walking down the hallway, Hans started laughing himself. Yes, let them enjoy those moments. Let them chuckle and giggle and make jokes about him. He didn't care anymore, he didn't care at all. Maybe he wouldn't have found his throne on Arendelle. Maybe he would have failed, maybe the invisible princess and her sister would have looked at him, _poor little _Hans, and they would have laughed like his brothers. But he didn't care. Because at least, he had the force to want it.

* * *

"Well then, are you ready?" Unsurprisingly, Manfred was the only one who came at the docks the day of his ship departure. The sun was shining and the air was fresh.

"I'm more than ready" Hans smiled, Sitron at his side.

Manfred toyed with his walking stick, pensively looking at his brother. "So… what are you planning to do?"

"What else? To be a king, one needs to marry a queen."

"What if the icy queen of the north doesn't want to marry you?"

"I'll marry her sister…"

"You make it sounds so easy…" Manfred laughed a bit before frowning. "Even if you marry her sister, won't that leave you in the same position you started?"

"Indeed…" Hans jumped on top of Sitron. "So?"

"So… try not to start trouble."

The younger prince smiled. "Oh, you know me. Would I ever start trouble?"

"Yes, yes you would" the sixth prince patted the horse, smiling. "If you come back unmarried, I think we should have that travel we were talking about, you and me… How does Central America sounds to you?"

"Sounds beautiful" Hans smiled gently. "But I won't come back unmarried brother," he then sighed with pleasure, looking in the distance, the great ocean opening up for miles and miles.

"Arendelle should be lovely in this time of year…" he commented.

Manfred nodded one last time. "Yes. You should find warm weather."

_The End_


End file.
